The history of the wood of Mestre started in the 80’s as an initiative of some institutions, such as the local committee for Public Works of the Venice City Council and the Regional Agency of Forests in Veneto (ARF), engaged with the themes of environmental safeguard and requalification of the mainland of Venice. This engagement was born from the awareness that the Venetian lagoon was developing in an unbalanced way; for a long time, whilst the historical centre of Venice was subject to several interventions for safeguard, the mainland underwent a scarce urban and industrial development. During the Nineties, the Project of the wood of Mestre was aknowleged by PALAV (Area Plan for the Lagoon of Venice), approved in 1991 and approved also by the General Regulation Plan in 2005. The PRG spots the areas destined to the wood of Mestre and foresees to realize them partly on public initiative and partly by means of the activation of private bodies, for which it establishes appropriate incentivation systems. These planning instruments, inserting important environmental interventions such as the wood of Mestre, aim to restore a balance between lagoon and mainland, through a strategic vision of territorial planning that faces the themes of safeguard and requalification of the lagoon environment with a more systemic approach.

The fulfilment of the wood of Mestre started in 1994 with the setting in the ground of 13,000 plants and it concerned the wood of Osellino. Currently the completed woods are, besides the wood of Osellino, the ones of Carpendo and Ottolenghi. The plan of the wood in Campalto, signed by Andreas Kipar and publicly presented in December 2006 at the city hall of Favaro, represents and important stage towards the complete fulfilment of the wood of Mestre. The wood of Campalto, included in the areas destined by PRG to public wood, started to become a reality in 2001, when the real estate company Veneziana Immobiliari gave to the Venice City Council an area of about 7 hectares located east of the centre of Campalto. The project of the wood of Campalto destined more than half the area to woods, and for the remaining part it planned renaturalization works for the canal west of the area, and some lawn areas and urban vegetable gardens. The intervention, financed by the Veneto Region with a sum of 462,000 euros, has been entrusted to Insula and to the Consorzio Dese-Sile, which are going to end the works by May 2007.